March 30, 2025
Day 41: Alicante to Valencia
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Coming out of Alicante, we had a landscape and buildings that while certainly more dramatic than back home, still did not trigger an inordinate number of "oh wow's".
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The track does not show a lot of serious hills between Alicante and Benidorm, yet I recall being glad to have the Peugeot, even in this stretch. Aside from hills on the road, there were also scenic mountains, like the one below.
There is no missing Benidorm, because it has so many tall and thin buildings. Our highway 332 skirted past it, so we did not have to deal with it as a downtown scene.
We were just celebrating having avoided Benidorm, when we found ourselves embroiled in Altea. All through the days since picking up the car in Granada, we have dreaded passing through narrow or congested streets with it. It's easy to see why very small cars are popular in Europe.
In the Altea and Calp area, hills reasserted themselves, and there were several tunnels through them. Now I was legitimately happy about the Batmobile.
This being Sunday, the road was filled with many peletons of day riders. As usual, they grabbed more or less of the lane.
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In our (now proven to be) insane earlier planning, we had ourselves sleeping at Benidorm, and then getting up early for the run to Denia, where we would board a ferry at 3 p.m. for Mallorca. Benidorm to Denia would be 53 km, and we casually assumed that if we got up early we would surely make it on time. How naive we were. The route, as we watched it from the Batmobile had hills and hills. We would have been pushing and pushing, and the clock would have run out!
As it was, we had lots of time to notice that there is a wetland beyond Denia, called Parque Natural de la Marjal Pego-Oliva. We headed over there for a look at any birds. Indeed, Dodie did see birds out her side window, as we cruised by wetlands. But there was absolutely no place to stop the car! We finally did get a spot to stop. We stashed the car and started walking. But we were unfortunately beyond the area that had been rich in birds. It was pretty, though, with many canals, and white houses climbing the opposite mountainside.
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Though there was nary a bird to be seen in this section, I did happen to spot just one. We make it to be a female Red Crossbill. If correct, it's a lifer!
Leaving the wetland, we soon got sucked onto the Autopista. I was rather glad of it, because I had had it with creeping along narrow roads. But Dodie hates big highways, and soon enough I found myself creeping through yet another small town.
But we did at least return to the 332, and as you can see, there was a section with a speed limit of 100, not to mention scenery like that weird pile of white construction:
Now at last we began to enter very familiar territory, in the form of the Albufera park, which is not far south of Valencia.
Last year we had very much wanted to visit Albufera, and cycled down here from Valencia. But basically unbeknownst to us, this area was hard hit in the flooding. We cycled around a bit, but decided to it would be safer to return to Valencia. The 332 at that time was completely clogged with traffic, and we only learned why later - the Autopista, on the west side of the lake (we were on the east) was blocked by piled up flood ravaged cars. So traffic was diverting down our side. Despite all that, we did make a brief foray to the town of El Palmar. El Palmar is from where you can get on a boat to tour the lake - assumes the boats are running, which they were not.
We thought it would be fun and interesting to return to El Palmar, and not to take a boat but just to peek at the lake for some birds. How surprising that we found a situation with some of the aspects of last year. Again, the highway was filled with scads of vehicles. But these were now not refugees but merry makers. This being Sunday, the whole of Valencia seemed out for a pleasure drive to El Palmar. The place was packed, and again, thee was not a single place to put the car to look at or do anything.
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Santa Cruz roads ( if you call them that) are still stuck in 1955, with 2025 people.
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One of my unfavorite memories of our 2 years living in Germany.
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We set the satnav of the car onto getting us into Valencia and to our hotel Turia. We soon realized that this would not be so easy, because Valencia is a high traffic city, with lots of tricky roundabouts and bridges. (Despite being dead easy on a bike.)
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Here begins the part of the day that we will remember most in future, even without the help of this blog. We were keenly aware of the amount of hassle that would befall us should we dent, scrape, or so much as scratch the Batmobile. It was on our minds as we pulled up to the Turia underground parking, and descended two levels, amid many concrete pillars and extremely tight turns. We parked in front of the bike storage area, and gingerly removed the partly disassembled steeds from the car, putting them together enough to pretend to be bikes, at the bike stand. Then we dragged our gear on the elevator to our wonderfully spacious 9th floor room. We had ordered a pile of needed replacement bike gear from amazon.es, and the Turia staff had already put our parcels in the room. Great!
Now all we had to do was to put gas in the Batmobile and return it to the Sixt office by the train station. We spent some time plotting where to get gas, and how then to get to the train station. It didn't seem exactly all that hard.
So we grabbed the Batmobile and edged it around the concrete posts and up the super steep ramp, into the streets of Valencia.
The reason I say this part of the day will create a lasting impression, is in how it fits in to the last 9 days, and to the previous year. As we retraced by car the bike route we had done in 2024 Valencia/Motril, we have marveled at how last year's Grampies seemed to do it quite handily by bike , and without too much whining, or even pushing, that would surface in the blog. That was impressive, and we don't think we could match them now. But in terms of the risk of heart attack or nervous breakdown, this car ride has been way over the top. Actually, although I have some notion of what heart attack may involve, I am not clear about "nervous breakdown". But now as the next hours played out, it's a tribute to us that we avoided both.
We rolled out of the Turia parking, and immediately realized that the street was one way, the wrong way. Ok fine, we went the other way, and set about working our way to the Repsol station, which after all was just 5 minutes away, according to Google. But intense traffic and one way streets stood in our way. We circled the blocks this way and that, but even when we could see the station, we could not reach it. This circling included the roundabout from hell, the one where I should have had a nervous breakdown, assuming I would know what that is. We are not sure how many lanes were in this roundabout, but we think six. Six, that is, if the drivers would respect lanes. And then, the roundabout hosted fifteen streams of traffic, coming in or going out. And it was not even round, it was oval!
We have bike ridden the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe (13 lanes, I think) at the Etoile (star) named for the twelve streets going in and out, but in the moment this seemed worse. Maybe I would rather get hit on the bike in the Etoile than to see the Batmobile sideswiped?
Valencia's version, with our track - twice!
The memorable moment was when I finally felt adrift in a sea of vehicles, coming at me from all directions. Dodie was saying "Go round it, go round it!" but I only saw a trackless sea of asphalt and random cars zooming around. Maybe that is a nervous breakdown?
We did get out of there, and amazingly went round it again a bit later, before fetching up at Repsol.
Now maybe it was Dodie's turn for the breakdown or heart attack. She switched from just studying the Osmand display to taking verbal directions from Google Maps. But if we missed a turn, or maybe not, and were heading down the wrong narrow one-way street, it would say things like "Make a U turn". We followed that thing around and around, and while pulling up in front of the train station several times, we could not find the rental car area. Dodie felt helpless in the heavy traffic and with the obscure directions to get us to the place. It was very tense, and this is where I say it's notable that our hearts held up. Finally Dodie came up with a slightly different interpretation of what Google was trying to say, and we were there! - sort of. We could see the SIXT sign, but no obvious place to put the car, or even move any more forward. We dispatched Dodie on foot to go talk to the person in the office. After a while she returned and directed me into an incredibly tight slot, actually on the roadway, but with parked cars left, right, and ahead. "That's it, they say leave it here".
Soon a girl came out of the office and took a walk around the car. "Looks good, you're done!" So that's how the greatest Grampie triumph since Valencia to Motril 2024 played out. Soon we got an email from Sixt: "THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING SIXT! YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY RETURNED YOUR VEHICLE"
The whole rental car return debacle, that ended ok. The teardrops are where we started and the train station is to the south and east:
I am very much looking forward to tomorrow, when I will put our bikes back into top shape, while Dodie strolls to Decathlon for a few items and to Correos for some stamps. Then we will be FREE on our bikes, maybe to go look at the port where our ferry will leave from Wednesday, and to swoop past the Market and the Old Town, with the mobility that only a bike can give you in a city. And by then, I expect our heart rates will be back to normal!
Today's ride: 1 km (1 miles)
Total: 1,075 km (668 miles)
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Hello Steve and Dodie!
This is Scott. We met last year outside the bike shop in Orleans I think it was. You were impressed with how trusting we were leaving our bikes parked while we walked around as I recall.
We are heading on another cycling adventure, and I would like to hear your advice! This 10 day trip is Regensburg to Vienna along the Danube. We will be joined by our son and daughter in law, and their 2 toddlers (2 and 4 yrs old - alternating from trailer to "shotgun seats"). Have you done this route? Any suggestions for sights to see? We will be limiting our days to 50-60k and camping. The 2nd half of our journey (just me and my brother), will be 2 weeks riding Salzburg to the Adriatic. Do you have any suggested routes here?
Thanks so much and great to see you continue to cycle the world!
Scott
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We have been on the Donau twice, I think - 2012 and 2019. In 2019 it was Grampies Track the Tortes. A link like this: https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/tortes/day-18-passau-to-aschach-an-der-donau/ will drop you into the middle of it. Our fondest memories are of Passau, at the confluence of the Donau and the Inn - the free organ concert in the cathedral, of Melk - for the monastery, I think, and Vienna, for the tortes, the stallions, the royal palace. It's best to consult the blogs for actual details.
There are easy to find gpx files for the Donau route. We could probably find and send you some, even from here. Or have a look at biroto.eu, for every European bike route you could fancy.
For Salzburg to the Adriatic, " Alpe-Adria" route is the classic. Also easy to find - but we could help. The route crosses the Drau at Spittal or Villach. We remember the Drau route as the most beautiful ever. In 2022 Grampies Searched for the Meaning of Life, along this way. This link https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/life/day-55-spittal-to-villach/ will drop you into the middle of it.
These blog references are better than anything we could recall off the top of our heads. We are notorious (with ourselves) for rolling into a town and not realizing we have been there before, before checking our own darn blog!
Let us know especially if you need help finding tracks for your trips!
shadybrook at shaw dot ca could work well for this.
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